Suggestions Re-creating channel letters for existing sign

[FSDesigner]

Has anyone had to recreate acrylic letters for an existing sign? We are replacing acrylic on a channel letter sign and the old ones were hand cut. I'm having a really hard time trying to get them designed so that they will fit... especially S and R, and curves. Has anyone done this and been successful? Right now, I'm printing them out and laying the old ones down and guessing how I need to warp them to fit and it's getting frustrating printing out multiple 23" letters over and over.

 

[CanuckSigns]

can you hold up a piece of paper to the existing letter and do a pencil rubbing or something? I would think that would be the best way, then blow the dust off the old jigsaw and do it the old fashoned way

 

[FSDesigner]

I would love that, however my boss wants these routed out on my CNC Router. I was thinking getting them close and then have my production guys do the fine tuning with the saw... I don't know how they would feel about that though, hehe

 

[Marlene]

Do you have the channel letters at our shop or are they on a building? If in your shop and if the old acrylic is intact, you can pull the old trim cap off and use them as templates. I would mark and repeated letters as hand cut can mean some are a little off. If on the building, that is a whole lot more work unless they let you take all the old faces off the cans.

 

[FSDesigner]

I have them here, but as I said, we aren't hand cutting them... my boss wants them routed on my machine.

 

[Gino]

If you didn't create the originals or the cans, I would be somewhat leary of doing them with a CNC. Odds are, you'll hafta go back in and clean them up by hand anyway.

 

[FSDesigner]

That's what I've been thinking... just not what my boss wants to hear. Thanks guys

 

[Johnny Best]

Take a direct pic of the old letter. Bring into your draw program and scale up to 23", and find a font close to it. Adjust your font to the pic of letter. Print that out to see if it is close. Then you will have a vector to cut on CNC. But, you could have it cut by hand in the time it takes to do that. Your boss likes to pay you guys by the hour I guess because you already have wasted a lot of time trying to duplicate it.

 

[henryz]

Sounds like a typical boss. That will never work, we do national accounts and if another company does the same size letters ours will never fit. We have 3 CNC tables and we still have to cut them by hand when this rises. Tell him just cause he bought a new table that all his problems are solved. Like some of the other people said earlier if you have the old faces vhb tape them to acrylic and run on a table router I would run it with the old trim cap on. If the faces and cans are in the field take some carbon paper and make a rubbing on paper the use spray adhesive to apply it to the acrylic and cut them on a band saw or jig saw. How many hrs. have you spend trying to match the faces are you doing paper patterns on a plotter or printing them? I would say it shouldn't take you more than 5 min. to stick the paper on acrylic and cut it by hand. It's only Wed. so you have the rest of the week to continue to try to match it. Good luck...

 

[AaronSSsignsKC]

Id tell the boss that he is being unreasonable, you could peel the trim cap off the old faces trace em hand cut em re trim cap em and have em ready to re install in half the time it will take you to try to re create a hand cut letter into vector art that you can use in artcam or some other routing program. Sometimes the old way is still the best way, if he cant see that time is money I guess that is his problem. Good luck!

 

[signbrad]

cbowles,

I have made hundreds of replacement faces for channel letters over the last 44 years.
As others have mentioned, hand cutting is best and quickest in this case. Trying to use the router will take lots of time and the result may be unusable without further hand work. Sometimes, someone who does not fabricate cannot visualize how difficult a project will be.

The old faces make good templates. If the old faces are not available you can take a rubbing of the sheet metal edges of the fronts of the channel letters, then add a little to that perimeter for the new faces. I usually add the width of a worn down sharpie to the rubbing outline of the channel letters. If the new faces are a tiny bit loose it's not a problem, but if they are too tight it will be a problem.

Brad in Kansas City

OFF TOPIC: I see your Highland Park High School there in Topeka is the subject of a mini-series on the A&E channel, "Undercover High." I was a little shocked to see that cell phones had become such a disruptive problem in high schools.

 

[signage]

If the boss want to route them, then as Brad said the old one make templates for a hand route with the correct bit :-{)
they would be routed then. just not CNCed.

 

[ams]

When that happens to me, I tell the customer that without the original file, it cannot be done and that they need to get a new sign. Always works.

 

[ChrisN]

What I've done already is take a picture of the faces with a large framing square (or a sheet of paper), square it up in Photoshop and hand trace the faces in Illustrator (or find a font & modify it).

To make sure my vectors match the actual faces, I then cut out the replacement faces in a cheap substrate such as Coroplast, and compare them to the actual faces. Modify the vectors, cut Coroplast, rinse, repeat, until the new faces match the old ones. Then you can cut out the actual faces out of whatever you need.

Whether or not it is faster to hand cut/route to match is another question...

 

[visual800]

Obviously your boss has never had to recreate faces for existing cabinets. You will NEVER........NEVER match whats on those cans now. By the time you get thru creating on the computer one letter I could have already cut out 3 letters. Remove faces, pop off trimcap and make pattern. Sometimes people that have no idea what to do expect us to do things using their method

 

[visual800]

I will tell you how to rectify this, tell your boss to recreate one of those faces on the computer.......he will learn a new lesson

 

[signbrad]

What I've done already is take a picture of the faces with a large framing square (or a sheet of paper), square it up in Photoshop and hand trace the faces in Illustrator (or find a font & modify it).

To make sure my vectors match the actual faces, I then cut out the replacement faces in a cheap substrate such as Coroplast, and compare them to the actual faces. Modify the vectors, cut Coroplast, rinse, repeat, until the new faces match the old ones. Then you can cut out the actual faces out of whatever you need.

Whether or not it is faster to hand cut/route to match is another question...

It may be worth doing as a learning experience. Especially if the boss sees the time and effort required.

 

[FSDesigner]

You guys rock! Update: I was able to route out the ones that were square and able to measure (L, T, I, E...) and my production guy hand cut the rest and they came out perfect. With you all and your expert advice to back me up, I was able to convince my boss that this was the best course of action. So relieved! Now I know that if this comes up again, it will be less frustration!

 

[FSDesigner]

OFF TOPIC: I see your Highland Park High School there in Topeka is the subject of a mini-series on the A&E channel, "Undercover High." I was a little shocked to see that cell phones had become such a disruptive problem in high schools.

Yes, it is a problem and the crime in that area of town is one as well. I have been kind of embarrassed by the behavior of some of these kids and what it is making Topeka look like.

 

[Gino]

Another happy ending....... for the sign part of it. The neighborhood sucks no matter where ya are.